


Advanced Applications of Personal Introspection

by Yellow_Bird_On_Richland



Series: been planting roots in each other’s dreamlands (left the garden gate unlatched for you, my muse) [1]
Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Character Study: Abed Nadir, Character Study: Annie Edison, Episode tags to be added later, F/M, One Shot, Pining, Slow Burn, Yes it's a slow burn even though it's a one-shot, abedison, as seen and filmed by one Abed Nadir
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:48:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26830933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yellow_Bird_On_Richland/pseuds/Yellow_Bird_On_Richland
Summary: Abed’s never liked the idea of having a muse. He’d rather collect inspiration from as many sources as he can find, so the well never runs dry, especially now that he’s landed a job as a production assistant in LA. Plus, the whole concept of person-as-vessel and creator-as-molder has always struck him as possessive and creepy. He'll study the idea if he ever gets to work on a meta-horror film in the general vein of Ex Machina, sure. Actually searching for a muse, though? Nope. Not something that interests him.But put a loaded gun to his head and say he has to pick someone to play that part?It’s Annie.It’s always been Annie.
Relationships: Annie Edison/Abed Nadir
Series: been planting roots in each other’s dreamlands (left the garden gate unlatched for you, my muse) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2164302
Comments: 26
Kudos: 117





	Advanced Applications of Personal Introspection

**Author's Note:**

> Snapshots of Abed and Annie’s friendship evolving over time, as told from Abed’s viewpoint. Written mostly through expansion of canon scenes, with a couple of invented scenes to fill in some gaps.

Abed knows. He knows, all too well, that the audience had expected him to name Troy as his muse on this, the night of the final episode. He can hear the complaints, the heckles:

" _You're succumbing to heteronormativity!"_

" _You're going for an unoriginal plot twist!"_

They're wrong on the first count—granted, Abed's only kissed Troy, but he's noticed enough of an attraction to male actors and other Greendale peers alike to comfortably identify as bi, thank you very much—and the second, too. It's not a plot twist if the foundations have been there for years. It would be more of a misdirection, at best, and he doesn't even care for that qualification, for its implication that there was some kind of scheme afoot betwixt himself and Annie.

It's nothing against Troy, either, no misguided bitterness that's sending Abed's assessment off-course. Abed's mostly got a handle on the tiny, lingering stabs of pain over his nautical departure. Troy played a different role, or rather, multiple roles in his life: first true friend, best friend, first love, a guiding mentor in some areas (like discussing robots, and butts, and robot butts), and an interested mentee in others (like becoming a Kickpuncher film connoisseur).

More significantly, and more pertinent to the discussion at hand, was the fact that Troy's finest role-playing and play-acting shined through when he and Abed weren't performing in a way that would be preserved for posterity. No, Troy was at his best when they were just in the Dreamatorium, either by themselves or with Annie, or when they were hosting puppet theater nights for the study group. Troy always held a tiny part of himself back when he was being filmed or otherwise recorded. Not too much, no, but if Abed's going to pick a muse— _"I'm not actually going to, I'm just running with the hypothetical,"_ he clarifies in his head, mostly for the audience and a little for himself—he wants someone who can give freely of themselves without hesitation. And that's Annie (even if she Jims for the camera more often than Abed likes).

Even when the camera isn't necessarily trained solely on her—heck, even when there aren't any cameras around at all—Abed's still learned almost as much about her as he has about himself during their time at Greendale.

**

"Abed! I'm not a Slytherin, I'm a Ravenclaw through and through!" Annie huffs, barely resisting the urge to stamp her foot.

"I didn't say you were a Slytherin," he corrects her as they head toward the cafeteria together. "I said you were a Slyther-claw. The two-house sorting system allows for much more nuance and better reflects real life. Unless you think every kid ages 11 through 18 can be sorted perfectly into one of the four all-encompassing categories of brave, smart, evil, and miscellaneous."

He's kind of being a jackass about this, but seriously, Rowling's original system is ridiculously simplistic, even for children's literature.

"No," Annie concedes with another huff and a roll of her eyes, "but—"

Abed cuts her off since he knows how to make her feel better. "I get it, you don't want to be identified as one of the 'bad guys.' But you're going to tell me you're not at all ambitious, Annie? Or cunning?"

She begrudgingly smiles at him for that as they get in the lunch line to make their salads.

Once they get settled at the table, Annie asks brightly, "Who wants to be in a psych experiment?"

Jeff disinterestedly declines, Britta says no before heading over to flirt with Vaughn, Pierce doesn't have a clue what's happening, Shirley says she'll pass, and Abed figures he will, too, til Annie adds, "You get paid," and Troy replies excitedly, "Do they do stuff to your butt?"

Annie opens and closes her mouth a couple of times before frowning. "Um. No."

He shrugs and answers, through a mouthful of a ham and cheese sandwich, "I'm in anyway."

Abed figures doing an experiment with Troy there won't be so bad, especially if he gets money out of it, too, but then Annie informs him, "The experiment is tomorrow afternoon."

He grimaces. "Oof. Tomorrow? They're showing all four Indiana Jones movies at the Vista, and I was really looking forward to the first three. I even brought a whip."

Annie turns her puppy dog eyes on him— _"anyone who resorts to emotional manipulation that quickly must be at least part Slytherin,"_ Abed notes internally—and wheedles, "This is really important to me, Abed. Could you please go as my friend? As my really good friend?"

" _There's no way this is fully sincere,"_ Abed guesses. _"But I doubt it'll hurt to play along."_ So he answers, with just a smidge of condescension, "Well, I didn't realize we were really good friends. I figured we were more like Chandler and Phoebe, they never really had stories together. But sure, I'll do it."

Annie beams. "Oh, thank you, Abed!"

Her gratitude is definitely genuine, and he offers his shy smile in return for her thanks.

Abed wants to head out, like all the others had much, much earlier, but he doesn't, because Annie had asked him to participate in this experiment. As a friend.

Eventually, she bursts into the waiting room, shouts, "Go home!" in Abed's general direction, and slams the door as she leaves.

He doesn't see her again until the next day, and the dark rings under her eyes suggest she's just as exhausted as he is, if not more so.

"Hey, sorry for bailing on your psych experiment yesterday," Troy apologizes.

She snaps impatiently, "That _was_ the experiment, Troy. We were testing how long people would wait in the room."

It falls into place for Abed. "Ah. Gotcha."

"Gotcha? That's all you have to say?!" she asks indignantly. "You sat in a room for twenty-six straight hours. No food. No water. Didn't that bother you?"

"Yeah, I was livid," he answers unassumingly.

Annie gawks at him. "Then why didn't you leave?!" He can almost hear the unspoken judgement: _"You know, like a normal person would!"_

He has his response ready, though. "Because you asked me to stay and you said we," he gestures at the space between them with two fingers, "were friends."

Annie's face crumples in shame and she doesn't say anything.

"Still think you're not a Slytherin at all?" he snarks at her.

It's a pretty lame parting shot, in all honesty. Partially because he'd mellowed out since yesterday—a good night's sleep can help make most things marginally more bearable, at least. Partially because the way Annie got fixated on the test reminds Abed of how he can get totally lost in his own interests—usually TV, sometimes video games. Getting reeled in by a book is much less common, but it's happened. Plus, she's only 18. Maybe 19? He'd committed plenty of thoughtless, selfish misdeeds at that age. Still does, sometimes.

Plus, he appreciates that she hadn't tried to defend herself, hadn't offered some lame, half-hearted apology. Words can be bent to people's wills and injected with falsehoods pretty easily. Expressions are much harder to fake, except for psychopaths. And Annie might be crazy, but she's not psychopath crazy.

He still thinks that might be the end of their arc together—he's had plenty of short ones with people who can't handle him for more than a few episodes—but the next day, she approaches him with a gift bag and a contrite look.

She offers it out to him. "Here, Abed. I wanted to apologize for yelling at you. You were being a good friend and I just selfishly took advantage of it."

He pulls the present out of the bag. "Indiana Jones. Cool."

Annie gives him a small smile. "I only got you the first three because—"

"The fourth one blows."

He looks up at her, smiling in slight amazement that she knows that, that their voices overlapped to make that comment.

He considers leaving it there, but he wants her to know everything's resolved, so he tells her, "We're cool."

Annie confirms that back to him when Professor Duncan offers her another shot to assist on more trials that evening.

She glances at Abed, then back at Duncan.

"Sorry, Professor. I think I'm watching movies tonight." She glances at Abed again, gives him a half-smile. "With a friend."

Real life isn't anything like the Sims, but nevertheless, Abed feels as if his and Annie's relationship as study group members and peers just leveled up into a friendship.

**

This isn't the weirdest intervention Abed's ever been in, but it's up there. Pierce's assumption that he's a virgin, though? That's pretty off-base. He's used to the racism and ethnicity-based insults, so he lets those go.

Plus, while the group is analyzing him and instructing him on what not to do to pick up women, it's pretty easy to turn the tables and take stock of everyone else's romantic proclivities, running through them in his head.

_Jeff: Classic playboy. Afraid to bare his emotions. Enjoys physical, no strings attached relationships and is attractive enough to get them pretty regularly._

_Britta: Similar to Jeff, at times. Has difficulty sharing her emotions. Less prone to hooking up, but will on occasion. Sometimes looks for physical relationships to distract from self-loathing. Could use some of Annie's optimism._

_Troy: Unsure of what he wants. Plays the big man on campus role, but doesn't seem entirely comfortable with it. Sometimes chases girls. Only likes Annie as a friend._

_Annie: Still harbors a very slight unrequited crush on Troy. Textbook fairytale romantic. Could use a tiny dash of Britta's cynicism about relationships._

_Shirley: Seemingly uninterested in pursuing any relationships at this time, given her focus on her kids and returning to school._

_Pierce: I'm committed to this thought exercise, but not THAT committed._

The group finishes up their initial analysis attempts more or less in time with his, and then Troy's gotten out of his chair to suggest, "Let's try a practice run. Alright, Annie, you sit here," he gestures at the end chair, then implores her, "and be a girl."

Abed bites his lip to keep from laughing at Troy's on-the-nose directorial debut when he says, "Abed, you take a run at her. Let's see whatcha got."

He settles on his character after a few seconds of thinking and answers Troy, "Okay."

" _Start subtle,"_ he tells himself, _"then flip the switch. Give them the show they want to see."_

That's easier than explaining that he's just not too interested in going to great lengths to find this mystery textbook woman. If he does happen to bump into her during one of his solo stories, great. If not, that's fine, too.

As he gets up, he settles on his character: Don Draper.

" _Given Annie's interest in bad guys, in letting herself want what was always forbidden, what she was always taught and raised to reject, the character should serve my purposes well,"_ he concludes.

He slowly gets out of his chair, approaches Annie, and keeps a safe distance while he asks, "What are you reading?"

She glances up at him, back at her Spanish textbook for a moment, then answers, "Pride and Prejudice."

He sinks down in the chair next to her and slings his arm over her seat—close enough to establish potentially sensual proximity without invading her boundaries and making her uncomfortable. "Hmm," he notes. "So you're familiar with two sins." She lowers her book a tiny bit and reciprocates his eye contact as he murmurs, "How about a third?"

Shirley's half-scandalized gasp of, "Oh!" almost throws him off, but then Annie gives a little start in her chair and it pulls him back into character. She turns back to look at Abed with a quietly shocked smile and he's never seen the cute definition in her dimples up close before. She glances away for a second and he makes his next move, casually opening his handy cigarette pack and adjusting his arm ever so slightly so he's nearly touching her.

He sees the muscles in her throat work as she gulps just before she answers demurely, "I don't think we're allowed to smoke in here."

" _Maybe I over-simplified my analysis of Annie's romantic tendencies. Because she knows exactly how to be coy, how to play it cool while escalating romantic tension,"_ he concedes. She glances back at him again, tracking his movements carefully, her eyes giving away some of her interest, but not all of it. Her smile suggests she wants something more to happen without making any demands of him.

Since one good flirty bit of repartee deserves another, he answers, in a low timbre, after eating her up with his gaze, "Then you picked the wrong outfit."

Today's skirt, in particular, is a touch shorter than what Annie usually wears, but she's got the legs to pull it off, easily.

She tilts her head to the left, and once she shuts her textbook, Abed knows, _"I've got her hooked."_ He reels her all the way in by softly asking, "Didn't you?"

Just before he half-closes his eyes, he sees Annie's line of vision drop immediately to his lips. And some part of his subconscious whispers, _"Maybe she's not the only one who's hooked,"_ as he forms his left hand into a loose fist and presses his pointer finger against the underside of her chin, tilting her face up as he slowly leans in, slowly enough that Annie can absolutely pull away if she wants.

He's almost positive he'll stop himself from kissing her. He's pretty sure.

He doesn't get to make the choice, as Shirley cries out in alarm, "Abed, what are you doing?!"

He leans back, away from Annie, to alleviate her concern and quickly replies, "Don Draper from Mad Men, what'd you think?"

Britta shakes her head and says, "Weird," with a partial frown, Troy answers, " _Awesome_ ," with a surprising amount of fervor, and Annie does a sort of pleased squat in her chair and admits, with an eager, youthful grin, "I liked it."

Shirley leads them all to burst into a debate over who exactly Abed should channel. He filters most of the noise from that explosion out as he retreats back into himself and sheds the Don Draper persona. He does hear Troy mention he should be like Calvin because he has a tiger and goes on dope adventures, and he makes a mental note: _"Read Calvin and Hobbes with Troy sometime."_

He also hears Annie remark, "No, you guys, Don Draper was clearly the sexiest," and records a mental note about that, too: _"Annie likes bad guys, confirmed. 100% confirmed."_

Abed's not sure why exactly he does that, but if there's one thing he's learned from Annie, it's that studious note-keeping is a virtue.

**

He's normally more observant than this, but then again, the last time they played paintball, the group's collective energy had been focused on Britta and Jeff's fever pitch of unresolved-turned-resolved sexual tension. It might be, too, that Annie's grown up a bit since last year, and the themed outfits contribute some gravitas to this year's war, as well.

Still, he can't help but marvel at Annie's general badassery when she's got a gun.

Even if, at the moment, said paintball gun is trained on him.

" _This is a new side to our dynamic,"_ Abed reflects. _"A little bit of a frenemy feel."_

He decides to banter with her. "I heard you never shoot an unarmed man."

She doesn't lower her pistol, but her voice drops as she delivers a gravelly, raspy threat. "Whoever started that rumor didn't eat my beans."

"Then I guess it's lucky for me I'm not unarmed," he comments. "Seeing as I'm…" he pauses to take a bite because the setup is too perfect to go to waste. "Eating your beans." Abed swallows, puts his spoon down as she holsters her weapon, and says, as evenly as possible, "Jeff wants to see you."

"Yeah?" She cocks an eyebrow at him with the same ease of cocking her gun. "Well, I want pants. A lot of people want a lot of things," she replies a touch venomously, spitting the consonants out in a sharp, staccato cadence. This Annie is all edges, with a take-no-prisoners and take-no-bullshit attitude. Abed's not sure if she's kept this side of herself sequestered away to avoid scaring the others or if she's cultivating it on the fly, but either way, he's intrigued.

Still, she goes with him to join everyone else because, on a larger scale, this is what they, and the study group as a whole, do. They turn Greendale into their playscape.

Or hellscape, depending on who you ask.

Either way, it goes double for paintball.

**

Annie fires her gun into the air in an attempt to restore order. "I've got something to say," she declares.

Someone sneers, "I don't take orders from girls."

Abed snaps his fingers at the offending individual. "Watch it, quasar face. Annie's a good kid and a better shot. So listen to her, or you'll be floating home. Got that?"

She gives him an appreciative nod. "Thanks, Abed. Er, sorry, Han." She then suggests to Jeff and Troy, "Why don't you just each carry out your plan? We can divide resources and personnel into two groups, and that way, we'll have one direct assault and one clandestine attack. The enemy can't wipe us all out if we're split up."

They pause their leadership feud to share a confused look, like, _"Why didn't we think of that?"_

Despite her insistence that playing Star Wars is immature, Annie adapts to her role of Leia quite quickly, rolling her eyes in irritation. "Because you're fighting over who needs to be in charge and the testosterone is short-circuiting your brains," Annie informs them with a weary sigh that seems to say, _"Do I have to do everything around here?_ "

She adds, "I know that, together, you're at least smarter than the average Stormtrooper," then tells them, "Go prove me right or City College will take over."

Troy nods and begins making preparations, gathering troops and munitions, and even Jeff doesn't dare talk back to Annie as he starts delivering orders to others.

She's got Leia's backhanded compliments and quietly outsized presence down cold, Abed realizes. A chill hits his spine, because the thought of watching Annie command an army with her new brand of steely poise is, well, intoxicating.

Between Troy and Jeff leading their squadrons and Britta and Shirley apparently acting as rogue agents, Abed and Annie team up rather naturally. It's just a side effect of him snatching the Han Solo role away from Jeff, nothing more, not part of a plan or anything.

"Hey," Annie murmurs, putting a hand on his arm. "Thanks for sticking up for me back there. This group gets so tangled in each others' feelings. You're a hero for standing outside of it."

Abed shakes his head. "I'm no hero. They're great, but I'll take a blaster every time."

He can feel Annie's gaze soften at the declaration and despite _knowing_ he's playing to her type—the baddie who has a chance at reform—he can't help but luxuriate in her attention.

" _Careful,"_ he tells himself. _"It's just a game. She likes Han, not you."_

Annie replies a touch breathlessly, "I think you're great." She grins, then qualifies the compliment with, "For a no-good, laser-faced, Jabba scoundrel."

" _There's Leia,"_ he thinks fondly before replying, "You're good, kid," as he squints down the sights of his gun, picking off another enemy troop. "But don't get too cocky."

He says it for himself just as much as Annie, considering this fight could be for the very soul of Greendale. Plus, for selfish reasons, he doesn't want to go out just yet.

Abed could never play this role all the time, he knows that. But for a spell, in the right setting? With a gorgeous, rebellious, crack-shot of a princess by his side?

" _I can sure as hell enjoy it while it lasts,"_ he thinks, giving Annie a saucy wink and a thumbs-up after she plasters yet another unassuming enemy's chest with a blast of pink paint.

Unfortunately, it doesn't last too much longer for them. City College scum box them into the library, along with Troy. Hunkered down behind a table, all three of them give one final futile search for paint bullets.

"We're all out," Troy notes grimly. "I'll try to draw them away so you two can make a break for it and hopefully keep the fight going. Thank you both for your contributions to the cause."

Abed and Annie each offer him a sharp salute and a, "You too, Troy," before he sneaks away.

"Will you be Han Solo after we die?" she asks Abed once they're alone, her voice quavering a little.

Abed grimaces. "Fraid not, doll. Once I'm gone, I'm gone."

"Oh. Okay." Her brave smile wobbles and crashes to the floor, where she looks at it sideways.

Annie sounds a little embarrassed, like she should've known better, like she shouldn't have gotten so swept up in the play-acting and his bad guy with a heart of gold persona, and Abed doesn't want her last part of the game to end on a sour note.

So he stalks toward her the tiniest bit, reaches out for her hand, and she whirls back like she expected it. He presses on the small of Annie's back to pull her close, tilts his head, and kisses her with all the suave charm he's got.

He thrills at how instinctively she adds to the contact between them, how she guides his movements ever so gently with her hand on the back of his neck, skirting it down the tiniest bit between his shoulder blades for a second. They almost break the kiss when the first drops of paint hit, but Annie's got her arms wrapped around him and she's angling her own head, chasing a hungrier kiss and he should stop it, stop it _now_ , as they draw breaths in unison, but how do you get a taste of heaven and then just go, "Nah, I'm fine. Thanks for offering me more of that, though."

You don't. So Abed doesn't. He sends the kiss spiraling out further into the galaxy, and he'll never be completely sure of it, but he swears Annie releases a breathy moan into his mouth. He stops when their breaths rattle together and he can feel Annie practically vibrating in his arms. She's an orange mess, they both are, but Abed risks a glance at her and he registers shut eyes, swollen lips, heaving breasts (Han's a rogue scoundrel, so he's allowed to look), and a face painted in near-pornographic ecstasy, almost glowing with unchecked want and genuine beauty. And if he doesn't dash away now, he'll never be able to.

So he leaves without ceremony, hears her murmur, "Ok," in a stunned, groggy tone, and lets himself relish in his little victory, in their moment, even if it came as Han and Leia.

He's accepted that that's the closest he'll ever get to truly kissing Annie. When he's playing one of her preferred character types. Since those roles aren't really in regular, day-to-day Abed's wheelhouse.

**

For once, Abed weirdly agrees with Pierce and his declaration that Britta's party before the actual Halloween party is a load of crap.

Britta _is_ making up this pre-party for something, but for what reason, he's not sure yet.

First of all, "pre-parties" are much more often referred to as pregaming, according to most television and movie references. An excuse to drink with a small group of friends before arriving at a frat house where standard college hijinks abound. Or, for groups with a larger male contingency, a way to ensure they're not sober the entire night if they get denied entry for damaging the vital male:female party attendee ratio. However, Britta's brought no alcohol. Just NPR podcasts, mostly. And they're split 4:3 between men and women, so there's hardly a need to worry about the group being a sausage fest.

"Listen, we can go to the school's dance in a bit," she insists. "But first, why don't we tell some…" she pulls a face, raises her hands, and curls them like claws. "Scaaaryyy stories?" she suggests, to groans from nearly everyone.

She grins. "Great! I'll start with a horrible fate befalling innocent people, and then I'm curious to get individual reactions."

" _Ah, a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror schema,"_ Abed recognizes. _"I can get behind that."_

Sadly, Britta's story is painfully contrived, and when asked for his opinion, Abed can't pull any punches.

"I'm embarrassed. I didn't care about the characters."

This seems to have thrown Britta off the rails, as she frowns, but everyone else is murmuring their assent with him, so he explains, "They were stupid. They deliberately put themselves in danger, and when they were warned about it, the guy got out of the car."

Britta squints and nods at him slowly. "Interesting...so do you believe he deserved to die because he was stupid?"

Pierce groans. "What the hell kind of party is this?"

Abed ignores the older man and considers Britta's question, then answers thoughtfully, "I suppose, from a creative standpoint, within a story's narrative, some characters deserve to die. Ones that lack common sense or basic survival instinct."

He quickly sketches out a story illustrating just how irrational the average characters in horror stories behave. He and his love interest—he bases it on Britta, since she was already there—get a cabin, and they have fully charged phones and weapons and locked doors, and they alert the authorities so _they_ can potentially get killed by the insane asylum escapee, but probably not; they'll most likely capture him. Maybe one bumbling idiot on the force gets murdered.

It's not Abed's best work, but he'd mostly been trying to prove his point, anyway, and in this kind of setting, he'd rather listen to how others craft narratives than create one himself. He's got a pretty good bead on what the rest of the group thinks of him at this point, anyway, and one night of events won't change anything too dramatically.

He's not sure what to expect from Annie when she volunteers to go next, confidently declaring, "You want a scary story? I'll give you a scary story."

Abed's blown away.

Annie channels Mary Shelley in this moment, fearlessly creating, carving out a story-telling space for herself, toying with narrative conventions and tropes the way he does so often, testing their limits until they break and then making something new from the scrap pieces. She's completing the process so skillfully, so effortlessly, that he can't even be mad when he realizes Twilight is clearly her source material. Her story's rich with adjectives, with her body language, her hands, telling much of it, as well, but she doesn't oversaturate her narrative with detail, instead letting the audience draw on their own fears and phobias to caulk in certain gaps she's strategically left open, and Abed will never, _ever_ make the mistake of underestimating Annie in any capacity again.

He tries not to grin as she describes, with a slightly maniacal gleam in her eye, the way an aerosol mist of blood sprays all over the skanky concubine, flinging her hands out and spreading her fingers wide to illustrate the scarlet arcs spurting from Jeff's torso as she sinks her fangs into it after completing her werewolf transformation.

The "vampire gets bitten" ending is a brilliant reversal, and Jeff looks mighty uncomfortable because (Abed kind of hates himself for knowing this, but not enough to stop himself from thinking it) he'd pictured himself as the monster, taking Annie for his own carnal pleasure, and now she's destroyed his chances at it. Plus, Jeff's always wanted Annie the most when she's somewhat normal, or when her "acting out" fits neatly within prescribed boundaries that suck the bone marrow and rip the teeth out of any genuine rebellion (like, say, a young woman kissing a much older man to win a debate at a community college). Not when she's "crazy Annie," relishing in her own decadent descriptions of violence. And the term "crazy Annie" doesn't fit, anyway. Not even as she's outlining (in a rough, raw voice that's nearly distracting Abed from listening) her sadistic torture of Jeff the vampire, whose gift of eternal life has transformed into the ultimate curse as werewolf Annie repurposes his tendons into gristly floss and swallows one of his eyeballs whole.

Annie's not crazy—that's a cop-out word, and Abed hates those, especially when there are better ones from which to choose. She's passionate, articulate, creative, inventive.

And, if he's going to be fair, or an impartial observer, she's also hyper-competitive, not always willing to accept change, and sometimes more than happy to absolutely bulldoze others if she believes she's right about a particular fact (the disaster of a bottle episode centered on her missing purple pen comes to mind).

Still, the way Abed considers it, everyone has imperfections, and he's willing to overlook Annie's a bit because he's usually well-equipped to handle them, anyway. And they're not the kind of flaws, like being outright rude to others, say, or being snooty, that render her a less attractive or compelling person, that make her someone he'd want to actively avoid.

Luckily, no one's noticed Abed's retreat into his own head, as they're all too busy gawking at Annie.

She notices everyone else's looks, catalogues all their gaping mouths, shrugs, and says defensively, "What? It's Halloween. If you're gonna tell a scary story, give it some texture."

It's such an Annie thing to say, such an Annie way to follow-up on some incredible gore, that he can't help but chuckle fondly at her, and he likes the way she lights up later that night when he compliments her with, "Your story was really compelling. I was impressed."

**

Britta and Troy are out getting Mexican. On a date. Or at least in a plausibly date-like scenario.

Thanks to Annie, who probably didn't account for the fact that Britta will be mildly disgusted by the amount of chips and salsa Troy can put down before his meal arrives.

Thanks to Annie, Troy isn't here, which is why things in the Dreamatorium are going wrong.

Because Annie tampered with—actually, no, tampered with is too strong a phrase and implies malicious intent.

She _fiddled with_ the Dreamatorium and added "empathy" to its functions. Ironically, in a fit of rather non-empathetic irritation with him.

" _I did kind of deserve it,"_ he admits.

Abed would cut Annie some slack if he was in a charitable mood. But he's not.

" _If she wants to see how the Dreamatorium works, then she'll get her wish,"_ he decides.

It stings more than he expects when she says, hesitantly, "You know how you wanted me to tell you when you were being scary weird instead of cute weird, Abed? This is scary weird."

He snaps into character to escape that feeling, selects someone who's very rarely ever been "scary weird."

"Hello, Annie," he says suavely.

She frowns. "Are you being Jeff?"

He shrugs, flexes his biceps. "Well, I'm not being a Kardashian."

He—Abed—runs, pivots, and buttonhooks around different characters, different scenes, convinced he's going to lose Annie at some point, that she's going to leave, because that's what people do, eventually. They want to get away from him.

But, to her credit, she keeps up, navigates her way around both his obstacles and her own with surprisingly deft skill.

She's worked her way out of her third or fourth Jeff simulation when she says, frustratedly, "I wanna be alone."

" _Ooh, rookie mistake,"_ Abed thinks before he answers, "Sounds good to me. Execute simulation, Annie/Annie."

The study room appears around them. "There," he says, as Annie. "Now we're alone."

She groans. "Great. So you're me now."

Abed asks back, since he's seen the not-so-clandestine looks and hair tosses and doe eyes, "Why are you blowing our magic moment with Jeff?"

The real Annie answers back, semi-impatiently, "It's not magic. It's not even real."

Abed likes hearing the hint of irritation in her voice. He'll need to think about that more later, once they get out of here. For now, he plays his role. Of Annie. It's surreal, but not quite as weird as he'd expected. He can relate to her control issues.

He realizes she's waiting for the conversation, so he keeps it going. "We love Jeff."

"No, we don't. We're just in love with the idea of being loved," Annie analyzes herself. "And if we can teach a guy like Jeff to do it, we'll never be _un_ loved, so we keep running the same scenario over and over hoping for a different result."

 _"Now that's an interesting development to hear about,"_ he notes in his head before getting back to the matter at hand.

"Running scenarios," he warns her. "Careful now. You're starting to sound like Abed."

"So…" Annie looks thoughtfully up at the ceiling for a second. "I probably shouldn't say things like Star Wars, Zardoz, Cougar Town, cool cool cool."

"Stop it. You're gonna get in trouble."

She starts barking out more of his buzzwords like a quarterback calling out audibles at the line of scrimmage. "Pop culture, pop culture. I'm on a TV show! Meta, meta."

After a few more minutes, Abed—as himself, as no one else—hears her approach, hears her tentatively ask, "Abed?"

"Yeah, I'm here."

"So I found you by turning into you," she muses.

His smile is still tightly zipped. "Cool cool cool."

"Can you tell me where we are so I can pretend to see it?" she ventures.

"We're inside a locker. Well, a metaphorical one. It's from junior high. It's a place where people like me get put when everyone's finally fed up with us," he explains matter-of-factly.

He's had enough experience with that particular sensation that he doesn't even need to run simulations about whether or not it'll happen.

Annie denies it, as expected: "Abed! We'd never do that to you!"

He shrugs. "My mom left, and my dad considers me irritating at the best of times. If they can't stand me, what are the odds that a random collection of strangers with no obligation to me will bother caring after I've outlived my usefulness as the group observer, or my quirkiness as the pop culture nerd?"

Annie looks annoyed with him for some reason, and he thinks his words will be a self-fulfilling prophecy (he's kind of accepted it as a given) when she narrows her eyes at him.

They're not.

Instead, Annie asks, a touch sharply, "You remember my parents basically disowned me when I decided to go to rehab and kick my Adderall addiction, right?"

"I do know that, but I didn't really think of it until now," he admits.

"Then you should know that found family sometimes trumps blood family," she comments.

"But what about the simulations I've run here?" Abed frets.

"The scenarios you create are like...great science fiction," Annie explains patiently. "They're impressive and detailed and insightful, but they're not accurate for crap. Science fiction never has been," she continues. "Look at the Jetsons. Or Back to the Future. Or 2001. Did we have a space odyssey?"

"No. No, we did not," he muses. "We got snowboarding in the Olympics."

"Exactly," Annie answers earnestly, clasping both his hands. "My point is, your simulations are nothing more than anxieties, Abed. You're afraid you don't fit in. You're afraid you'll be alone." She takes a deep breath, then keeps explaining. "Great news. You share that with all of us. So you'll always fit in, and you'll never be alone."

He likes, not just the sound of that, but the way Annie frames it, the duality of always/never as she'd presented them in her sentence.

"Thanks, Annie," he answers.

"You're welcome. And if you ever need me to come help you out of here, you know I can do it now," she promises with a smile. "And also, " she gives a little sigh, "about Troy and Britta. You totally saw what I was up to. I was trying to set them up to match this cute script in my head."

"As a wise friend once told me, you can't make life go according to a script," Abed observes, and he's glad to see her smile return at that. "I'll take that lesson to heart, I promise."

"Me, too," she agrees. "We both need to get more comfortable winging it. At least it'll be less work."

"Definitely," Abed nods. "Now, um…" he rattles the fake shackles. "Could you give me a hand with these? I forgot to bring the fake key."

She holds up her quantum spanner from the start of their session. "Will this do the trick?"

"Technically, no, but it'll work," he replies, and they smile at each other as Annie zaps the chains. Abed finally stands up and, before he knows what he's doing, pulls her in for a surprisingly tight hug.

"Seriously...thanks, Annie," he breathes out.

"Seriously, ditto," she answers quietly. "I kinda needed this, too. And now I kinda need lunch."

"I think we'll have to bash in a few Blorgon skulls before then, if you're up for it."

She fixes him with a serious nod before replying ( _God_ , her British accent is still rubbish, but he kind of loves it), "Lead on, my good inspector, lead on!"

Abed replies smartly, "With you in tow, Geneva? It will be a delight."

**

Abed kisses Troy the night before he's due to ship out with Lavar Burton because he's spent so long imagining it that his curiosity may well kill him.

It's way less difficult than he thinks it will be, than the movies make it seem, especially for two men. He just knocks on Troy's door, enters after hearing a wide-awake answer of "Come in," and asks. Troy, after a pause of a few seconds, responds, "Yeah, sure, buddy," like Abed just asked if he wants to play GTA IV or make Special Drink. Like it's no big deal. Abed appreciates that, the way Troy will at least entertain most suggestions.

They don't do much more than kiss that night, and it's gentle, sweet. It's them. There's hunger and intent behind their kisses, but they don't talk about that. Troy whispers, at one point, "I always thought your face looked really smooth, but it's kind of cool to feel that it is. Do you use moisturizer, Abed?" It's such a Troy comment that Abed smiles into a kiss for the first time in ages, and their innocent playfulness is a soothing balm that could maybe numb the pain to come.

Except they both realize, _"We should've been doing this for so much longer,"_ and it shatters Abed. And his person, the one who's always helped patch him back together when he's been broken before, is gone.

Afterwards, Annie tries, and tries, and tries—she plays with Abed in the Dreamatorium almost every time he asks, but she doesn't know when to let him wallow in there and when to talk to him through the door the way Troy does—or, rather, did. However, she doesn't make her usual complaints about having too many meals of buttered noodles, photocopies her notes for Abed on the handful of days when he doesn't attend classes, and painstakingly tiptoes around the elephant of Troy's departure, neither ignoring it entirely nor calling too much attention to it.

Abed can't quite find the words to thank Annie for everything, for granting him more patience and kindness than he deserves, because then he'd be acknowledging why she's doing what she's doing.

He kind of hates himself for not pruning this particular edge of selfishness. No, not kind of, he can't even pretend to qualify it; he _does_ hate himself for it.

The worst part is that no one else in the study group seems to empathize with his and Annie's shared misery for more than a few days, at most. Maybe there's been some desensitization, since two of their own had already left. Shirley was half-gone even when she was a full-time member of the study group, always busy with her kids and Andre, and Pierce had passed away. It was like the different levels of emotion a parent might have when their first child is leaving for college compared to when the third one sets off. But Troy represented an integral part of not just Abed's being, but of the group's heart, along with Britta. Yet, somehow, Abed and Annie are the only two struggling to cope.

It makes Abed want to scream, except that would be Annie's outsized reaction, so he needs something else. He decides he'd rather water down all of Jeff's precious whiskey and punt Britta's therapy books off the roof of Greendale's main building. He wants to share what it feels like to be walking around with bruised ribs that won't heal, wants to transmit his and Annie's collective pain at losing a love and a best friend, respectively, to the others and see how long their platitudes about "the only constant in life is change" and "we're all growing and progressing through life" and "we should be proud of Troy" keep getting bandied about.

He finally, totally cracks on a Saturday a few weeks later. During an Inspector Spacetime mission, Annie asks, in her standard, subpar British accent, "Where are we going today, Inspector?"

He gives a dramatic flourish and automatically presents his grand declaration. "It's not a matter of _where_ we're going, my dear constable, but _when_!"

His face turns to stone as he realizes his error, and Annie bites her lip and looks away because Troy's presence is now and will be, for the very, very foreseeable future, defined solely by his absence. Abed barely gets the words "End simulation" out before he breaks down, emitting his anxious whine, and then he's suffering a crying jag for the first time in years, and Annie follows suit and they're curled up together, rather pathetically, on the floor of the Dreamatorium.

He thinks at first that Annie's crying because she tends to do that when others initiate it, but then she whispers, "I know you loved Troy, Abed, and he loved you right back. And I'm not trying to, to take anything away from that, from just how deep your feelings for each other went. But I miss him too." She sniffles and lets out a keening wail, almost, and confesses, "I miss him _so fucking bad_ , Abed, and…"

He picks up on her pause and thinks he knows the rest of her sentence, so he whispers back, in a half-strangled, gravelly voice, "It seems like no one else in the group gets it, right? What Troy meant to you. To me. To us."

She nods insistently, miserably, against him and sobs harder and the sound jolts him to action, pulls him free from his own pity party, at least for a couple of seconds.

Plus, Abed had heard some hesitation in Annie's admission, as if she feared she'd annoy him with her own, personalized sensation of missing Troy, and he pulls himself together just long enough to realize, _"I owe her."_

He can't do a lot, not in his current state, but he helps her up off the floor and half-carries her with him to his bed, tells her, "I'm ordering pizza for dinner tonight," and manages to get through the brief phone call.

Abed's normally not super big on hugs or cuddling, but this is hardly a normal late afternoon, and he recognizes that his Annie needs comfort, so he opens his arms up and hopes, with limited conviction, that they'll feel better if they engage in standard comfort-giving activities in the safe haven of his blanket fort room.

It doesn't work as well as the movies say.

They cry together, off and on, for another half-hour, at least, intertwined tightly on his bed, clinging to each other for support, before Abed feels brave enough to say something, anything, to try and stop the tear tracks running down Annie's cheeks for a few minutes.

" _Who knows, maybe it'll be therapeutic for me, too. Britta would probably think so,"_ he thinks dully.

So he asks, "You remember when you and Jeff and everyone were running for school or class president or whatever it was?"

She grabs another tissue, blows her nose, and nods. "Mmhmm."

"And, " he swallows thickly and presses on, "And Troy and I were carrying on with our bit of being political pundits?"

"Yeah," she nods again.

Abed rearranges his mouth into a weak grin. "We were doing a 'coming back from commercial' sketch during part of that, like where you re-introduce yourself to the audience, and out of nowhere, he announced that his middle name was Butt Soup. As in, Troy 'Butt Soup' Barnes."

"Butt Soup?" she repeats questioningly, a ghost of a smile playing on her lips. "How did I not hear about this?"

Abed shrugs. "I don't know, but, yeah, Troy called himself Butt Soup," he confirms with a half-snort, half-wheeze, and their laughter might be broken, might be tear-stained, but at least it exists. And maybe Britta's on to something with this whole "letting yourself feel and talk out the pain" thing, because breaking the dam of emotions in his chest and soothing Annie as she engages in her own cathartic outpouring of Troy moments and stories provides a tinge of relief, a ray of light that he couldn't see previously.

**

Around a mouthful of pizza later that night, Annie asks, "Can we be not ourselves after this?"

Abed frowns. "Not ourselves?"

"I want to," Annie sighs and blushes a little before continuing, "I want to do something stupid, but keep it safe, in the Dreamatorium. But I also don't want to play a particular character."

"Could you clarify a bit more, please, Annie?" he asks once he finishes munching on his crust.

"I kind of want to make like we're a pair of kids getting a little bit drunk on a playground," she admits. "Definitely not hammered, just a hair hazy. I'll probably have a couple of sips of the Maker's Mark we still have from that party a few months ago," she adds. "I'm just not sure what archetype would fit for that setting. So I was wondering if you maybe had some ideas."

He can see the scene unfolding: dim, aged fluorescent flood lights, shaky camera work, a slow-mo shot of a Converse sneaker stepping on blacktop, a yelp during a near-fall from the monkey bars, a gratuitous zoom-in on the bottle of whatever one of the underage drinkers (you have to be underage for drinking on a playground to be rebellious, rather than sad) swiped from their parents' collection.

Annie doesn't interrupt him at any point during his world-building process, and he likes that. Likes more, still, how she's kneadable like clay in his hands, in his imagination, but never surrenders her essence entirely to roles. He decides, "High school seniors stuck in their hometown with little to do on a midsummer night would fit this setting nicely. The kind of people who are half-haves, half-have-nots, content to settle on the fringes of the popular crowd without looking down on those beneath them in the social hierarchy."

"So, that would make me the girl down the street from the girl next door," Annie suggests, fleshing out his starting point. "Someone who's not a trouble-maker in the traditional sense of the word, but has a small rebellious streak inside her?"

"Yes," Abed nods to confirm the validity of her half-questioning statement, pleased with how their visions are working in unison. "I'd be a more generic background character, the bridge between different social castes in the school. Someone with only a few true friends who makes the most of his usefulness. Sort of a glue guy. Together…"

He hesitates, picturing what their dynamic would be like. Comfortable, definitely. Only strained if his character tries to make a move, to jump into the girl's social tier when he's only allowed to exist on its perimeter. But they can pal around easily, on sort of parallel lines. "We wouldn't exactly be misfits. More like people embracing their slight outsider status." He stares at Annie (he's never needed to frame her with his fingers because she pops against any background), mentally tones down her makeup a bit, pictures her wearing dark wash jeans and a semi-generic pop-punk band t-shirt. All Time Low or Marianas Trench, maybe. Yeah. This works. "Does this whole scenario match up with what you had in mind?" he asks.

She grins. "It fits to a T. You're brilliant, Abed. And you're never a generic character to me."

He nods to acknowledge the compliment, glad that the second slice of pizza he's eating covers the satisfied hum he makes at her observation.

"What are you thinking of for outfits?" Annie wonders as they clean up after dinner.

He pulls up the mental snapshot he'd taken of her and considers for a minute. "I'd say...picture a late-teens Miranda from Lizzie McGuire or Spinelli from Recess, with the edginess toned down a bit."

"Ooh, nice description," Annie murmurs appreciatively before she starts walking to her room. "I can dig that vibe."

It doesn't take Abed too long to pick his clothes. Dressing for the part of a forgettable late 2000s secondary male character in a teen romcom is child's play compared to some of their other adventures. He throws on one of his less nerdy graphic tees—a red and white Coca-Cola t-shirt—and digs an older pair of jeans out from the back of his dresser. The pants are a little short and a little tight, but they make his already long legs look even more gangly. _"Fits the awkward teen part really well,"_ he notes as he glances down and walks over to the Dreamatorium.

He's started some of the initial calibrating when Annie comes in, decked out in dark blue jeans and a black AFI t-shirt with a giant image of an oversized crow pecking at a bloodstained pumpkin on it. She's swept her hair to one side, over her left eye, as much as her current style allows for it, and she asks Abed shyly, "Is this look ok for our little getaway? Britta gifted me the shirt a while ago, she said I could use something kinda punk to offset all the Stepford Wives outfits."

"Great," he answers with a thumbs-up. He'll gratefully use setting up the Dreamatorium as an excuse for looking away from Annie so she can't spot his blushing, because she really has no right to pull off so many different get-ups as well as she can.

"Okay, we're just about all set," Abed declares after another few seconds of tinkering. "I adjusted it to low power mode since this will be a pretty laid-back setting. Last thing to think of is names."

Annie tilts her head, taking in Abed's appearance. "I think I wanna see how we look in the scene first before we select identities."

"Alright," Abed agrees; he throws the Dreamatorium's main power switch and the environment starts to render in front of them.

It's twilight at the park. Crickets chirp. A slight breeze stirs the chains on the swings and they clink together. Annie and Abed interrupt the silence, pulling up in a gold '03 Toyota Camry.

"Why'd you name your car Ellie again, Cal?" Annie asks him.

She's always been great at picking out names in the Dreamatorium, no matter the setting, and Abed wonders how she applies them so accurately. Looking down at his clothes, at how he fits in the dusky, late night and the empty park as they step out of the car, he just _feels_ like a Cal who's driving an old Camry named Ellie.

"Named her after Ellie Goulding. Since it's a gold car," he explains with an easy grin. "You made fun of the pun enough. I can't believe you didn't remember that..." he pauses for a second, searches his mind for a name, thinks he hits on one. "Leah?"

Annie raises her hand hesitantly. "Timeout. Can I ask a question about my character?" she ponders aloud as herself.

"Sure, go for it," Abed answers, and she replies in turn, "Do you spell Leah with 'a' at the end, or with an 'h?'"

"With an 'h,'" he tells her, and Annie nods happily, responding, "Ok, good. I've always felt like the other way is incomplete." She closes her eyes for a few seconds, reopens them, and announces, "I'm all set to get back in character."

Abed claps his hands together. "Cool cool cool. Cal and Leah, drinking in a park, both polluting and yearning for their youth in one go. Let's do this."

Abed always appreciates how Annie commits not just to the mental aspects of imaginative settings, but to the physical parts, too—how she really, truly _plays_ with him no matter what the scene entails, how she pumps her arms to swing through the monkey bars and launches herself off them with a forceful jump while he scales the geometric, plastic jungle gym—no old, rusty metal to worry about here.

They each steal sips from the bottle of Maker's Mark from time to time, and Abed smartly puts the cap back on—no need to potentially have a spill in the Dreamatorium—before they clamber up a spidery rope ladder to the top of the oversized slide in the park so they can descend it together, hand-in-hand. He's—Cal's—not sure if the warmth in his chest is from the booze or from hearing Annie's—er, Leah's—wild, unrestrained screams of laughter bouncing off the metal slide and echoing in the still night air.

"Hey, Leah. Thanks for this," he tells her when they finish playing and lay across the hood of his car, still taking tiny swigs of Maker's Mark here and there.

"No problem," she answers back. "If anything, thank you, I invited you here."

"You didn't wanna go to Blake's party tonight?" he asks. Blake sounds like a good name for the stereotypical hot guy who has everything in high school—wealthy, semi-absent parents, effortless good looks, a massive house for hosting shindigs, preternatural skill in some ball-related sport, instant access to any girl he wants, etc. "Thought you had a bit of a crush on him."

She shrugs. "You get burned by fire one too many times, you don't wanna fuck with the flames."

Abed might let that go. Cal pushes. "But surely you need some spark of something for..." his voice trails off.

" _For what, idiot?"_ Abed grumbles at his fictional counterpart. He's definitely, definitely projecting younger Annie's desire for romantic relationships onto Leah, and he hasn't drunk that much whiskey, but it's enough to make arguing with himself even more of a hassle than usual.

If Annie notices anything amiss, she lets it go. As Leah, she just answers, sort of cryptically, "I'd rather have a fireplace than a bonfire that could rage into an inferno or die out without any warning. The unpredictability is exciting sometimes. For a time. But it's not sustainable."

He's not sure what exactly to say—this reminds him of the many reality-warping moments he'd shared with Troy in the Dreamatorium, suspended part-way between speaking as characters and speaking as themselves—and his chest is tightening up and his breathing's getting shallower when Annie offers an earbud to him and tugs an iPod free from her back pocket.

 _"Nice touch,"_ Abed thinks admiringly at the homage to late 2000s teen rom-com moments.

Not that they're playing the leads in a rom-com. They're side characters. Or, at least, he is. Annie shines too brightly to be sidelined for long.

"I think this is apropos," she murmurs as she scrolls to a song and presses play.

_It's a drunken midnight on the streets_

_Brightly dusted with the neon lights_

Abed smiles at the first two lines—it _is_ an appropriate song, whatever it is—and sort of zones out until he hears the singer croon,

_You've got everything goin' for you_

_So I'll go for you_

_With everything I've got._

_Right here...the best days of our lives._

_Is this coincidence or a sign?_

_Is there anything I missed?_

_Is there anything I missed?_

_Tell me if I'm wrong,_

_But why would we change a thing?_

Abed swallows down a bitter bark of a laugh at the Troy-centered irony, reminds himself, _"Stay in character."_

Leah slides her hand over his, and Cal clasps his fingers around her wrist. Just the way Abed does for Annie sometimes.

He sees, now, why she'd been hurt and rather pissed when he'd rushed off after their Han and Leia kiss.

Because there's no way they can completely remove themselves from the equation, even when they're playing pretend in the Dreamatorium, and he's not sure if the lyrics in the end of the bridge are speaking to their characters or to Annie and Abed:

_I swear we spent most afternoons_

_Somewhere in an act,_

_We were part of something_

_Ours and ours alone,_

_Anywhere was home,_

_We're al-most here, again_

_We're al-most here, again_

_We're al-most here, again..._

_Right here, right now..._

Annie shifts herself over to him and he'll let this happen if she wants it to, like it's a game, with vague rules: because he initiated their last kiss as Han, she has to start this one as Leah.

She offers him two gentle kisses to the guitar riffs and fading drum beats in the song's outro. The first tastes like smoky desire and the second is a mix of _"I'm not leaving"_ and _"I'm sorry"_ all at once. He doesn't know what to do when the song ends, so he mutely passes the earbud back. She slides off the hood of the car and whispers, "We should probably get going, Cal."

Ok. Fine. If she wants to play it that way, he can, too.

He nods. "Good idea, Leah."

As the scene fades to black and the Dreamatorium returns to its normal state, Annie looks up at him. He sometimes forgets how significant the height difference is. She says quietly, "Thanks for doing that with me."

He nods. "Sure thing, any time. Well, not any time, exactly, but."

Annie nods, gives him a half-grin. "I know what you mean, Abed. Wanna watch a movie or something?"

He shakes his head. "No, thanks. Think I might do some writing by myself or just relax in my room."

"Gotcha." She retreats to her own room, as well.

Abed usually takes at least a few minutes to himself after completing Dreamatorium sessions to reflect on the characters, or if there's any part of the latest simulation that he might want to mine for inspiration. But today, he can't quite focus.

No, that's not right. It's that he can't focus on the Dreamatorium specifically. Instead, he keeps thinking back to his earlier conversation with Annie, when she'd admitted that she missed Troy something awful, too.

He replays his response back: _"It seems like no one else in the group gets it, right? What Troy meant to you. To me. To us."_

He's always liked dissecting what exactly makes a particular group of people transform from distinct individuals to a collective "us." Partially because it's just interesting, from a socio-psychological perspective, and partially as a way to more easily identify group dynamics, ascertain where allegiances lie, and potentially predict some behaviors, at least on a small scale.

The study group, at a macro-level, definitely counts as an "us." Heck, Jeff even deemed them a community during their first meeting. That one's easy.

They've sometimes defined "us" across lines of gender or age.

For Abed specifically, he got used to being an "us" first with Troy, and then Annie joined, not as a third wheel, but as an additional, distinct "us": Troy/Abed and Troy/Abed/Annie.

And now, he defines "us" most often as himself and Annie.

He doesn't really mind that.

**

"I mean, first Pierce dies, then Troy leaves. Now people are—" Annie pauses, and Abed supplies the rest of her sentence with a comment of, "Getting married?"

She nods, and he frowns. Not at her observation, but at his own. Finishing each other's thoughts has kind of become a standard thing for them, one that goes both ways. It's a bit weird to consider, since that's normally lead couple behavior, but there's no lead couple, even with Jeff and Britta's declaration that they intend to wed.

He tries to level with her. "Annie, look, I don't know people, but I know TV."

She cuts him off with, "You know me, Abed."

He searches for a comeback, for a way to dispute her point, but there isn't one, so he instead answers, "Yes, I do, but there's only one you. In terms of other people, or, to continue my analogy, other characters, their instinct is to spin off when they're afraid their show is ending. In Jeff and Britta's case, it'd be something that would last six episodes and would feature them bickering."

"The kind of show they advertise on CBS during football games? Like, watch this hit new comedy at 8, 7 central on Tuesday nights?" Annie suggests, and Abed gives his full approval, with double finger guns and a grin.

"Exactly," he nods. "It would be them and another WASP-y couple, with a title like "Better With My Worse Half" or "Married and Harried," harried as in annoyed. Though that would probably work better with a character named Harry for the double pun," Abed muses for a second before Annie orders him, "Stop developing."

"Sorry," he apologizes. "Anyway, my point is that this show, Annie, it isn't just their show. This is _our_ show." He goes to gesture to everyone else, but it's only the two of them in the underground hallway at the moment, so he glosses over that part by adding, "And it's not over yet. And the sooner we find that treasure, the faster the Jeff-Britta pilot falls apart."

"Got it. Thank you, Abed," she answers softly.

"You're welcome."

She's still looking at him a touch warmly, and he knows Annie well enough to sense when her affection is veering toward danger, so he quickly declares, "I have a girlfriend."

Her eyes pop. "I'm sorry, what?"

"You were about to start a kiss lean," he points out.

She scoffs and meets his eyes as she rebuffs him with a, "Was not," but she glances away for a fraction of a beat and Abed can tell she's lying.

On some level, Abed's always recognized that Rachel is a side character, a pretty distraction from the intimacy he'd once shared with Troy, but he'd expected to find her more memorable than that. To say, "I'm with Rachel" to Annie to decline her potential advances. To reference Rachel by name.

Since he apparently can't do any of that, Abed's not surprised when they break up a couple of weeks later.

Nor is he surprised when the dick-ish, post-production revisionist part of his brain decides to torture him for the next week after.

" _Because,"_ he thinks, _"what if Rachel and I ended things before that whole crazy treasure hunt? Before Annie offered up that kiss lean?"_

He struggles valiantly to keep his imagination from running that scenario on a loop, from dissecting what his and Annie's formative moment might be like and comparing it to Jeff and Britta's latest attempt at coupling. Their scenes have been giant, showy fireworks that fizzle out quickly. By contrast, his and Annie's kiss, if they'd shared one in that episode, would've been quiet, almost relegated to the background.

Abed tries not to consider how enjoyable that experience might be.

He tries not to listen to the whispers in his head saying that he and Annie are practically creating their own spinoff in the existing universe more and more lately. That he and Annie have had an increasing number of intimate, quasi-couple moments in recent episodes. That their deep friendship could serve as the foundational scaffolding for an actual relationship.

Abed dives deeper into references, into meta-fiction, into doing what he can to slow Jeff's slide into alcoholism to escape his own head, because he must be misinterpreting the writers' intentions, and there's no way Annie's interested in him as anything more than a best friend, either.

**

Fiction and non-fiction keep blending, shading together in gradients. He can't tell if it's a sign that they're growing up or clinging to fading adolescence, based on how they—Abed and Annie—are becoming more and more present in all of their character play. Though they're engaged in more of an homage tonight, to Mr. and Mrs. Smith, obviously. But there's no focus on including quotes, on mimicking characters' behaviors. Heck, if it wasn't for him dressing up in a snazzy suit and Annie striking a killer figure in an elegant, sleeveless evening gown, Abed would have a hard time saying they were anyone but themselves tonight.

He and Annie haven't danced together too much in formal settings, but they've watched enough noir thrillers and engaged in enough espionage missions in the Dreamatorium to be able to execute box steps and jazz squares without too much trouble.

"Spin me?" Annie asks him hopefully while Jeff's checking in, and he follows her request. Abed's glad she's focused on surveying the perimeter for threats and responding to Jeff's call so she can't see his gaze drop to her exposed shoulders, to the diamond of bare skin on her upper back and shoulder blades.

She's gripping his hand like a lifeline and he guides her back in smoothly. He's normally not one for, well, dancing at dances—he'd rather people-watch at least some of the time.

 _"But then, I'm normally not dancing with Annie,"_ Abed notes.

Thanks to the need to maintain comms, they stay in contact with each other nearly all night. They even pull off the classic spy couple "slow dance and fire off shots while still holding each other close" move and celebrate with a high five before they get sniped: first Annie, who looks down at the silver paint splatter in shock, then Abed, who does the same.

"Is it just me, or did us getting taken out feel really anticlimactic this time?" Annie wonders.

"Yeah," Abed concurs. "I wonder if it's meant to signify our aging beyond fun and games like this."

"That seems lame. And shitty," Annie observes with a frown.

Abed nods quietly, unsure of where exactly to direct things from here.

At least, until he and Annie gaze at each other's silver paintball stains before coming to a mutual, non-verbal agreement. Abed tilts his chin up, then glances down at the floor. _"Super-dramatic super-spy death sequence?"_

Annie replies with a firm nod, confirming, _"Super-dramatic super-spy death sequence."_

They hook their arms around each other's necks, across each other's shoulders, then lean back at complementary angles, tilting their heads toward the ceiling and crying out, "Nooo!" while they sink to the floor. Their combined shout turns to laughter as they get up and dust themselves off.

"For our final paintball game, that was pretty fun," Abed comments as they're leaving the cafeteria. "And it was nice to have it conclude in a fairly short time frame for once."

"Absolutely," Annie agrees. "Plus I won't have to take a ridiculously long shower to scrub orange paint out of my hair this time."

Abed stops short. He hasn't thought about that paintball war in ages, but he'd _never_ contemplated that particular, um, after-effect of the game before.

Out of an abundance of respect for his best friend, Abed subconsciously warns himself, _"Don't think about it."_

He realizes the mistake just after he makes it.

Because it's like when someone tells you, "Don't think about a big gray elephant."

And now you're thinking about a big gray elephant.

So when Abed tells himself, "Don't think about Annie showering," all he can think about is Annie Edison, in a steamy shower, with orange paint and water droplets running in rivulets down her naked body.

Okay, he's human, he'll admit that it's wonderful, too.

" _No,"_ he corrects himself quickly, _"Annie, Annie is wonderful, a stellar best friend."_

And she's physically beautiful.

And (Abed rarely lets himself voice this, but his mind has already jumped down the rabbit hole, so, whatever) she's so goddamn _sexy,_ so gorgeous even when she's decked out in fucking _pajamas_ (Dreamatorium Troy was right, lingerie is overrated), and—

"Hey," Annie says softly, looking at him with what seems like concern. He's still lost in a fog, so it's hard to tell. "You ok, Abed?"

He shakes his head a couple of times, coughs, nods. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool cool cool. Just trying to think of what movie we could watch tonight. Got lost in the planning process," he lies.

"Oh, gotcha." She waits a beat, then asks, "Are you open to suggestions, or do you want to pick something yourself?"

"Suggestions are good," he assures her, breathing a little easier at the idea. _"Annie will steer us back to safer ground,"_ he notes with relief, _"with a light romcom or an easy-to-consume action flick. Or maybe something like the Big Lebowski, we haven't watched any Coen Brothers stuff in a while."_

"I was thinking, since I haven't seen it yet and I'm pretty sure we just did an homage to it…" she shoots Abed her half-devilish grin, the one she wears when she's going to surprise him with a movie choice and pick something that would've scandalized freshman or even sophomore Annie. He barely has time to brace for it before she asks, "How about Mr. and Mrs. Smith?"

" _Just say you want to watch something else,"_ he urges himself. _"Just tell Annie no."_

He grins, nods, and flashes her a thumbs-up. "Sure. Good call, Annie."

He laments internally, _"You dumb sonuvabitch."_

_**_

"Wanna stop and pick up ice cream on the way home?" he suggests.

Annie nods in approval from the passenger seat.

"Do you have any particular flavor in mind?" she asks while they peruse the frozen desserts section of Target.

"Not really, I just wanted something sweet," Abed replies. "Feel free to pick for the both of us, Annie."

She offers a surprised smile in return while examining the cases. "Letting me pick tonight's movie and dessert. Sure you're feeling alright there, Abed?" she comments airily.

"Yep, definitely. I can handle variables if they're ordered within a known framework," he explains. "We have similar ice cream preferences and know each other's dislikes, so I was confident you wouldn't buy, say, Chunky Monkey, since I'm ambivalent about that flavor, at best," he answers, and he gives a pleased hum at her selection: Americone Dream.

"And," he adds as they head towards the checkout, "it's easy to let go of some control when you're around. I trust you."

She rewards him with a massive smile and asks, sounding like she can't quite believe it, "You trust me that much?"

"Of course," he confirms. "Why wouldn't I, Annie? We're best friends and long term roommates."

"Aww," she answers softly, giving a pleased little head tilt in response.

Once they get home and change out of their fancy evening wear, Abed sets up the movie and gestures at the television with the remote. "You ready to watch?"

Annie's thrown on her standard pajama garb—sweatpants, one of around thirty free Greendale t-shirts all of them have gathered over the years, and her red hoodie—and nods once she gets settled under the blankets.

He contemplates holding her hand or offering to let her curl up against him during the movie. Those physical contact points had started as a comfort measure after Troy left, as reassurances that they still had each other, and they've continued off and on since then.

 _"We end up sort of dozing off sometimes when we do that, though,"_ Abed recognizes. _"And I do really want to watch this."_

Annie leans up against him during the start of the movie anyway, and he doesn't mind. She sits back up once the action really gets going.

And Abed runs into an unfamiliar problem.

Normally, he'll check in on whoever his fellow audience member is at least a few times during a viewing. To make sure they're at least semi-interested in the film, to gauge their reactions. But for the most part, he achieves near-total immersion in whatever's on the screen.

He's not really watching the screen tonight.

Instead, he watches the pulse point in Annie's neck thrum fast and hard during a shootout. He studies the way her jaw drops the tiniest bit when Angelina Jolie sweeps back the slit of her dress to retrieve a pistol and a throwing knife from her thigh holster. He notices her chest rising and falling rapidly as Mr. and Mrs. Smith flirt in veiled threats and indecent innuendos at a cocktail party.

He's consuming her consumption of the movie, he realizes.

Which is a problem, because he's supposed to be the movie expert and he's not super familiar with this particular entry in what he calls "domestic action thrillers." So he should probably be watching the movie itself in real time instead of cataloguing his best friend's reactions to it.

He refocuses on the film. Just in time to see the two leads smash into a dining room cabinet in a fight, then transition into raw, rough, dirty fucking on their dining room table, all too-loud moans and nails clawing down each other's backs.

Brangelina's bodies are brutally beautiful—modern Hollywood stars look too good to Abed, sometimes—but Annie's gasp halts his critique of the industry's physical standards for attractiveness.

"You ok?" he asks her.

"Yeah, sorry, Abed. I just didn't realize how, um, energetic and intense the sex scenes would be," she admits sheepishly.

"Yeah, there's a lot to unpack with the idea of physical coupling as violence, along with violence presented as another form of intimacy," Abed comments.

"Would you…" Annie hesitates, wets her lips with her tongue, and asks softly, "What do you think about that type of aggression?" She adds hastily, "In terms of what it says about the characters and, you know, film analysis."

 _"This is totally fine,"_ he whispers to himself. _"You and Annie have evaluated and unpacked tons of movie scenes together. There's nothing out of the ordinary here."_

He begins carefully. "Well, there's the first level of a domination/subjugation or object/subject dynamic. Of the acting force and the one being acted upon."

Even with the clinical language, Abed's mind plays snippets of delectable scenes he shouldn't want, of himself and Annie playing out the roles of dominant and submissive lovers.

He sees himself pinning Annie up against a wall and kissing her with such unrestrained fury that their front teeth click together.

He sees Annie pushing him roughly onto her bed so she can straddle him.

"They're playing with the idea of taking control versus relinquishing it in both a sexual context, and in terms of choosing whether someone lives or dies, then?" Annie asks in a low voice.

Abed wills himself to nod as she extrapolates, "Except even that act of giving up control seems awfully aggressive with how they're, um, doing it."

"Yes. A keen observation, Annie." He swallows hard and continues, "It may change later in the movie, but for now, the two Smiths seem to be on pretty even footing. So they can each be the aggressor or the more passive one, depending on the context."

"I like that idea," she offers quietly. "Of taking and giving in equal measure, depending on what you and your partner want and need. I think it speaks to how well they communicate."

"And there's a layer of trust. Of assuming your partner will properly listen to you and not accidentally hurt you. Which is ironic, given the whole married assassins who are assigned to kill each other plot line," Abed answers back as he pauses the film so they don't miss too much. Even if they are _so_ not watching, or conversing, about the movie anymore.

It still feels safer to ground whatever this discussion is within a fictional context, even an ersatz fictional context.

Annie replies in a hushed tone, almost as if she's confessing a sin, "As someone with control issues, that idea is really powerful and intimate to me. The concept of being with someone you trust and love so deeply that you can surrender yourself to them and…and just...just let them _have you,_ " she breathes, then murmurs, "It's _intoxicating_."

The weight she gives to the word, the way she slowly enunciates every syllable...God, her voice itself might be a drug.

"Yeah," Abed whispers back. "It is."

Abed knows he sometimes projects, but he's definitely not imagining the wistful hint of lust that's crept into Annie's throaty voice and he's never run a scenario like this before because he'd stopped doing that with friends. Or best friends.

Best friends who now discuss sexual relations through movie analysis, apparently.

The moment shatters, shutters itself off from them because they're not quite brave enough to grab at it. Abed presses play, the movie resumes, and they don't talk for a while.

His mind presents flashes of moments he can't ignore when he's fruitlessly searching for sleep that night.

And in every scene, every last one, is Annie, Annie, Annie.

**

"What are you doing?" Annie wonders aloud as she catches and snares Abed's gaze through the camera, in her mirror. They're at a triple remove from actual eye contact, and yet, somehow, it feels like Annie's staring through him.

She flips her hair back, tosses a look in Abed's general direction, and then orders, "Hey—stop!" Abed's rarely been more grateful to have an excuse to ignore one of his best friends (Troy will still retain that distinction, along with Annie, always) as he pans down her body to her legs. She interjects again, "Hey, stop!" before threatening teasingly, "If you don't put that silly thing away..." Annie hesitates for a fraction of a second, offering a hint of her doe eyes, with her mouth open just a smidge, and then finishes her sentence with a dire, if playfully delivered, ultimatum: "I swear, I'm gonna stop loving you."

Abed knows they're only acting out roles, like they've done plenty of times before, so why are those words pressing on his neck with the deadly precision of a knife blade held to a jugular?

In a rare loss of self-control, Abed struggles to keep his breathing quiet as he zooms in on Annie, approaching her slowly. She glances down for a second, as if deciding just how much of a trouble-maker she wants to be, then warns, "Oh, that's it," as she gets up, wearing a smile he thinks (he hopes) is reserved only for him for a flash of a moment before she re-enters the role of the giddily, almost sickly-in-love missing lover. She lets out a little yelp of excitement as she tosses herself gracefully onto the bed, sweeping her hair back and giggling senselessly.

From an artistic standpoint, as a director working with an actress, Abed appreciates Annie's wholehearted commitment to the scene, to the way she props her head up with a fist to again make their second-hand eye contact as intense as possible as she murmurs, "Happy birthday."

From a real-life standpoint, as one friend who's pined for another for longer than can possibly be healthy, he's almost doomed.

Annie's barely keeping her toes on the safe side of irresistible, wearing a coy, domesticated grin, like they've arched their bodies together tens if not hundreds of times just before she flutters her eyes shut and lifts her svelte figure off the mattress, puckering her lips up, and if he puts the camera down on her bed at just the right angle he can keep them in the frame of the shot and say the kiss is part of the movie and…

"What are you guys _doing_?"

Britta seriously Britta'd her timing today, even for her.

Still, Abed explains, since he'd rather she know the truth. Or the facade he's conveniently trotting out as the truth. He's not totally confident about what's real and what's manufactured anymore when he's focusing his camera on Annie. "We're doing Annie's missing lover footage."

"Yeah," Annie chimes in, "you know, in movies, where the hero's wife or girlfriend is dead or missing, so he sits in the dark and watches her in a home movie, or a—"

"Or a hologram," Abed adds, interrupting her slightly; he figures mourning will still exist even when technology's advanced that far.

"Or a hologram," Annie agrees, nodding at him like that response makes all the sense in the world, and he falls a little harder for her, "over and over, and she's always beautiful and full of love, almost to the point of being stupid."

" _I'm about eight steps past that point for you,"_ Abed concedes to himself as Annie concludes, with a shrug and a surprisingly happy grin, "We're making footage like that for me, in case I get kidnapped or murdered."

"Oh, _super_ healthy, guys," Britta snarks. "The health department called, they don't want anything back."

Annie rolls her eyes with such heavy theatrics that they practically end up in her skull and how, _how_ can a woman look so gorgeous while doing that?

Britta turns away and stares right into the shot, and Abed directs her, "Britta, don't look at the camera." She leaves in a huff. Annie chuckles heartily at him before splaying herself back out across her bed, and Abed's common sense is nowhere to be found because he just wants to kiss her senseless.

"How was that take?" she asks.

For once, he lets an unfiltered response slip past his defenses, responds as honestly as he knows how. "You're amazing, Annie."

Redirecting from the scene to honing in on her part—was that on purpose or on accident? And who's to say, in any event? Certainly not Abed. His mind can be classified as fried or blissfully empty right now, and either way, Annie's to blame for that; she's sort of becoming a cause of and solution to many of his problems in day-to-day life.

"You are too, Abed," she answers softly, rewarding him with one of those achingly warm, tender smiles just before she says, "I've gotta start getting dressed for the wedding, so…"

"Yeah, me too," Abed lies breezily; all he really has to do is get changed into his nicer clothes, but Annie lets it slide because she's cool that way, most of the time. He retreats to his fort and watches the clip back once, twice, three times, imagining a director's cut where Britta doesn't interrupt them and he gets to kiss Annie again and again and again until he gets brave enough to drop the pretense that he's only doing it for the perfect take.

Until he gets the courage to admit he could spend all day kissing Annie if she wanted to let him.

**

"I'm the original Annie!" Jeff's woefully watered-down, one-note version of season 7 Annie proclaims. "And now I'm grown-up hot, not little-girl hot."

Abed has struggled to get invested in today's episode. He knows their time as this final, Frankenstein-esque permutation of a study group turned save Greendale committee turned assorted collection of friends and colleagues is up. He knows the rest of them know. Even Jeff. But Jeff's having a hard time coping.

They've tried to be patient with their former ringleader, but Abed can't tolerate this outlandish, fantasy-driven BS. Not from an artistic standpoint, and certainly not from a perspective of being Annie's best friend.

"Cut," he calls flatly, barely bothering to conceal the exasperation in his voice.

"What? What's wrong with this scene?" Jeff demands, already on the defensive.

Abed sets his jaw, takes a breath, and counts to three. He's glad Britta gave him that tip all those years ago, about how to avoid spitting words back like bullets when he's annoyed with others.

Because right now, he could easily say, "The only times you're not infantilizing Annie are when you're sexualizing her, instead."

Or, "You're worried you're not living up to your potential. So you want to strip Annie's agency away and keep her here like a caged bird because it'll make you feel more comfortable."

He doesn't voice either of those thoughts to Jeff. He's better at being a friend now. Most of the time.

He hesitates once more and steals a glance at Annie to suss out her feelings about Jeff's pilot; they've had the whole non-verbal mind-meld communication thing down for a while after all the years of living together.

He tilts his head a tiny bit in Jeff's direction, then gives it a shake. _"You—who you've become—shouldn't be in this version of season 7."_

She gives a firm nod, half-rolls her eyes, follows it up with a sort of world-weary shrug, and bites her lower lip, like, _"I agree, totally. I knew you'd get that. But it's not worth it to make a scene on everyone's last night together."_

Abed considers clamming up, but now they're all waiting for his response, and there's no other great narrative way out of this, so he falls back on a safe play: referencing TV.

"It's just, your version of season 7 would undermine a lot of Annie's character development to date. It would be a disservice to her, and the viewers," Abed observes as dispassionately as possible.

Annie takes the baton from Abed, directing a winning smile at him first for the explanation and then turning a slightly softer version toward Jeff. "Just like I was meant to be in Greendale when I thought about going to Delaware with Vaughn, I'm meant to be leaving it now, Jeff." She reaches across the table to give his hand a reassuring squeeze. "We'll all be apart, but together. If you guys don't think I'm creating a massive group text so we can keep in touch once I get settled in DC, you've got another thing coming."

"Ok, ok. I can work with that." He sighs and takes another sip of his drink. "I'm sorry, we should be celebrating. It's just difficult to come to grips with the fact that you guys _are_ leaving, even if it's for bigger and better things, for dreams that you've worked hard for. But you are, so, I'm not gonna be the jackass who makes you feel guilty over it." He raises his glass as a half-toast, half-peace offering. Britta gives him one of her "see, my therapizing sometimes works" smiles and Frankie offers one of her "I'm proud of you for being a functioning adult" smiles (it's a little condescending, but Abed thinks that if anyone's earned the right to condescend against them, it's her).

"It's not like all of us are leaving you in the lurch, Jeffrey," Craig gushes, and he admits, "That's true," then deadpans, "At least I don't have to _take_ any more classes at Greendale," and that gets a laugh out of everyone, a little slice of normalcy. After another round, Jeff says, "I gotta go. Um. I think I left something at the school," and Annie offers, "I'll go help you look for it."

After the two of them leave for their last scene, Abed polls the rest of them. "Delayed final group reunion? Delayed final group reunion? Delayed final group reunion?"

They all agree, of course.

" _Glad I snuck one final recurring gag in there,"_ he reflects as they set out from the bar.

**

The group finale is what he expects it to be: hugs all around—Chang coming out was a surprise, but then again, he always served as a loose cannon—and a feel-good send-off of everyone imagining their ideal season 7.

The smaller, more intimate ending of Jeff dropping him and Annie off at the airport hits all the right notes, too: a lingering hug, extended glances back, waves, etc.

And now it's just Abed and Annie.

The way it's been so often the last couple of years.

Honestly, this is (more or less) his ideal ending to season 6. Especially since now, left to their own devices, they can drop the pretense that everything ended in a perfectly wrapped gift box with a neat little bow.

Annie starts tearing the wrapping paper off first. "I don't mean to be rude to Jeff, especially since he drove us here." She glances around for a second as if a member of the old Greendale gang might pop up from behind a potted plant, ready to judge her for passing judgment on one of them. After a beat, she goes on, commenting, "I feel like he got too invested in his little season 7 fantasy world, though. And you know it takes a lot for me to call someone else out on that type of behavior, considering…"

"You spent tons of hours playing in the Dreamatorium with Troy and me," Abed completes her thought. "Yeah, I picked up on that, too. Was there anything else in particular you two talked about before the rest of us got to the study room?"

"Nothing too unusual. Jeff just wants to relive his youth. But one thing kind of annoyed me." The vein in her neck pulses a little. "He said he was 'letting me go.'" She snorts. "Like I needed his blessing to, you know, pursue an internship with the _motherfucking FBI."_

Abed nearly spits out his gum, he's laughing so hard at her sass and profanity, and she laughs, in turn, at his reaction before she finishes her story. "We ended up kissing, since I didn't want to completely wreck the moment. But," Annie gives a half-grimace, "circling back to the 'letting me go' line. When was I his to have at _any_ point in the last, what, three years? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, Abed," she adds, "since you know me almost better than I know myself some days. But I'm pretty sure I've been totally over Jeff for a while now."

Despite the fact that he's exhausted and some TSA agent will undoubtedly yank him aside for a "random" pat-down once they hit the first security checkpoint, Abed glows at her comment. He _does_ know Annie inside and out, and her self-assessment does, indeed, ring true. He reassures her, "You have been. I think—" he follows her earlier lead and hesitates for a beat because, well, after six years at Greendale, he's used to looking over his shoulder before making a less-than-Christian comment about one of his friends.

"You think what?" Annie prompts him. They stop just before the security checkpoint since they both have a few hours to wait before their flights take off, so there's no need to rush.

"I think Jeff got used to taking care of you in a certain way. Back in the early days," he starts his answer. "And he's had a hard time reconciling that you've outgrown his particular brand of care. That you've outgrown Greendale, when it comes down to it," he continues.

"You have, too," she nods. She takes a deep breath, then confesses, "And I don't think I'm going back. I mean, aside from reunions here and there, and maybe to see my parents. Or if I got assigned to wherever the Denver office of the FBI is, if," she crosses her fingers, "this internship works out. Then I'd be kinda close by."

"One, I'm sure you'll make it work. Two, I think the Denver office would be in Denver," Abed jokes, and she swats at his arm affectionately. He turns serious and replies, "I guess I'm in the same boat. It's nothing against Greendale, at all, but—"

This time, Annie finishes his sentence for him. "There are other opportunities waiting out there for us. And, thanks to Greendale, we'll be at least a little ready to face them."

Abed grins down at her. "Well stated, Annie." He says his next line without thinking. "I guess our time as roommates is officially at an end."

Her face droops a little at that and he wishes he could rewind by about eight seconds to take back his words. She replies softly, "So it goes." Then, she hitches a smile back on her face. "We had a hell of a run, though, didn't we?"

He nods his agreement before they pass through security without incident (Annie giggles at Abed's abject shock), and their gates are next to each other, and it's late, so almost no one's around. They spend the next hour and a half starting nearly every sentence with "Remember when…?" and waxing nostalgic about the group's most hilarious moments and ending them almost crying laughing, leaning on each other. And if this is how they spend their last few hours together, as connected via Greendale, Abed won't have any reason to complain.

Well. That's not strictly true. He'd never put this on his bucket list, but he'd never had to, after a point. He'd just accepted it: _"I want to kiss Annie Edison."_

(Really, it's shorthand for _"I love Annie Edison,"_ but he knows it's too soon to share that.)

" _You're going with one of the most cliché moves in the book?"_ Abed asks himself. _"Confessing your feelings in an airport?"_

" _Better to see if this could happen now than try and bring it up when we're separated by thousands of miles,"_ another part of him responds.

" _Start with a truth that could be platonic. One that wouldn't necessarily lead to anything dangerous,"_ he reasons.

"You know, I haven't thought about my season 7 too much yet," he begins, but Annie cuts him off with a gasp and says, "You told us to not talk about that or what we want to happen won't come true!"

Even now, she's willing to listen to him, to humor him—is it any wonder why he'd like to at least try sharing one kiss when they're themselves?

" _Screw it,"_ he decides. Abed won't regret it forever if he leaves without kissing Annie, but that pain will haunt him longer than he wants to admit, and if anything, he can blame it on sentimentality. If Annie even goes along with his planned kiss lean. But he knows she's pretty susceptible to them.

"Don't worry, I'm saying this as something I only just now made a conscious decision to consider," he counters. Her countenance brightens as he asks, hoping he doesn't sound too desperate, "Think we'll be able to hang out together sometime next season?"

"Duh doy!" Annie answers immediately, and he frets for a second that her callback to Britta's semi-irreverent phrase might just be a placating placeholder when she adds, "We'll have to look at our schedules eventually, but I'd love that. I…" she blushes. "I'd kind of been planning on that, to be honest."

Abed feels something like a surge of hope in his chest. "Same here," he realizes and confesses sheepishly. "Guess I just sort of assumed it would happen and only verbalized it now."

After a pause, Annie lifts up the armrest separating the two of them in their chairs and leans against him. "You're my best friend, Abed," she murmurs. "Like I'd go a whole year without seeing you? C'mon now."

"I dunno," he shrugs. "People leave, people change. Or Chang, I suppose," he deadpans, grinning as _his_ best friend dissolves into giggles next to him.

"Change isn't always bad, though," Annie points out. "Our dynamic changed and got better with time. Got great, honestly. And," she hesitates again, looking like she's torn between gulping her words down like they're decaf coffee or spitting them out like they're regular blend.

Abed stares her down, wills her to keep speaking, because it feels like they're suddenly on the precipice of something.

For added reassurance, he places a hand over hers. "Annie. You can tell me."

She keeps her position, snuggled against him, even as her cheeks flush pink. "All the times when everything was going to shit from junior year on—when I had that crappy pharmaceutical job, when Troy left, when we nearly all got suspended—knowing that I could come home to you helped me keep my sanity. Like, that was sometimes the only good part of my day."

She's raised the stakes with that, and he'll call and add some chips to the pot. "You were my favorite part of Greendale for the last two years."

She looks dazed, practically stunned at that admission, and maybe Abed should stop talking, but dammit, don't people usually want him to open up more? So he goes on, "And even before that, there were all these moments when you intrigued me. When we were acting, when we weren't. When—when I wanted…" it's his turn for words to fail, and Annie fills in the gap.

Just not in the way he expects.

"You remember when Chang taught us basic conversation in, like, the first or second week of Spanish 101?" she asks.

It'd add to the romance to say yes, but lying for sappiness points isn't really their thing, so he offers up the truth, instead. "Of course not, Annie. You of all people know I wasn't really paying attention in that class."

She cracks up, and seriously, how did it take Abed so long to realize he wanted her when he'd do damn near anything just to hear her _laugh?_

"Well, during one of the few classes he taught us actual, honest to God Spanish, he highlighted the difference between _adios_ and _hasta luego_. _Adios_ is more of a permanent goodbye. _Hasta luego_ is temporary, more of a see you later," she explains, wearing that for-Abed's-eyes-only smile. He thinks he knows where she's going with this, and he's right, as she wipes his mind blank with her biggest doe eyes and a whisper of, "And I think I know how I wanna tell you _hasta luego_."

Turns out he's pretty susceptible to kiss leans himself, to Annie fluttering her eyes shut and tilting her face up towards his, to the feel of her fingers digging ever so slightly into the front of his hoodie to pull him closer.

He wants to, has to, confirm that they're not playing around as he cups her face, his long, thin fingers trailing along her jawline. She glances down at them, her expression transitioning from wonderment to desire as she sinks her teeth into her lower lip and slowly, slowly lifts her gaze back up to meet his. Abed wants to keep eye contact until their lips meet, he really does, but he's never let himself truly focus on just how fucking kissable Annie's mouth looks until now, so he drops his gaze back to it.

She nods once, twice, as they lean in and whispers, in a throaty, awestruck voice he's never heard before, from any of her characters, _"Abed."_

He answers in kind, _"Annie,"_ his voice thick with all the emotion he's only ever allowed himself to parcel out to her in tiny moments and finally, _finally_ , they're kissing as themselves.

It's not just an _hasta luego_ kiss.

It's hello. It's waking up to Annie making piping hot chocolate chip pancakes in Casa Trobedison on a Saturday morning. It's a promise of abstractions becoming concrete possibilities and fantasies coming to life and more plane rides. And with those, he'll have to say goodbye, money, but who cares about being a few hundred bucks poorer if he's spending the cash to see Annie?

It's confirmation that their first-ever kiss wasn't just a Star Wars homage, that they'd intentionally sparked up flames when they acted together in that scene and when they'd played roles in countless others.

It's "I always knew we had something" and, even better, "I know we _have_ something."

It's passionate without tipping too far into a cliché kiss and, considering they're not living together for the first time in years, it's strangely, deliciously domestic (he recalls shooting her missing lover footage and thinks that, even then, with how they'd played it, they both knew this touchpoint could come to pass).

It's a promise that while they might be apart, they'll still be together. And while that's a callback to Annie's earlier line to Jeff, their bond strengthens it by at least a factor of two. Because Abed loves everyone in the study group, sure, but he _needs_ his Annie, and he thinks she might just say the same about him if he asked.

"This is the ending I really wanted for season 6," he whispers as they break apart, and Annie doesn't even bother giving an "aww," just softly confesses back, "Me, too," and surges forward to kiss him again, with the kind of ferocity she'd displayed during their Han and Leia paintball kiss, except they don't have to worry about stopping this time. The full experience of kissing Annie Edison—having his fingers wrapped up in her hair, inhaling deep breaths of her semi-floral, semi-vanilla-y perfume, feeling her smile against his lips—rolls over Abed like a breaking ocean wave and so, too, do a boatload of endorphins when she breathes out, fierce and insistent, "You're coming to DC for part of season 7."

It's not a question, not at all. It's almost a command, a certainty, and Abed can sense Annie's trepidation when he doesn't respond right away. He takes a second to get the phrasing correct, but he barely needs to think beyond that, because it's him, it's Annie, and there's no games, no characters, no roles to contemplate. So he answers, "Of course. And you're coming to LA for part of it, too."

He pulls her into a kiss this time, to see what it feels like, because he can. It's kind of a great mistake. Because he wants to tell her more, about how long he yearned for her, about how it felt like they'd been steadily building to this for years. About every moment he's catalogued where she played the starring role and left him starry-eyed. About how he got his premise wrong, initially.

It's not just that he'd pick Annie as his muse if he had to, but that he'd happily serve as hers, too.

But he lets the words go unspoken, for now, because they've already spent months, at least, talking around _this_. And sure, they've traded kisses before, but now they've discovered what it's like when Annie's hands loop around Abed's neck and his arms cradle her body close in an entirely non-platonic context. They learn how Abed moans when Annie sucks on his lower lip and how she gasps the first time he swipes his tongue into her mouth, across the insides of her teeth.

The sensations are echoes and slant rhymes of little pleasures they've shared as other characters, but everything is electrified when they're together as _themselves_ , as Abed and Annie _._

They have a lot to figure out in the next hour or so before their flights leave. But for now, Abed thinks, that gorgeous revelation is so, so, _so_ much more than enough.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Advanced Lessons In Deconstructing Conventional Romanticism](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29467350) by [Yellow_Bird_On_Richland](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yellow_Bird_On_Richland/pseuds/Yellow_Bird_On_Richland)




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